There exists various deployment schemes for bridging the distance between an optical fiber network and a plurality of customer premises. i.e. subscriber locations, and/or or further devices to be accessed by and/or coupled to the optical fiber network. According to the concept of ‘fiber to the home’ (FTTH), each customer premise should be accessed by the optical fiber network directly, with optical fibers reaching into the home of the respective customer. However, since this will entail significant costs for installing optical fibers to each customer premise, other deployment schemes than fiber to the home are more prevalent; especially due to the already existing electrical networks accessing most buildings, apartments or other device locations.
This application refers to any of the following deployment schemes in which at least a part of the distance between the optical network and the customer premises is bridged by electrical signals, be it wired, i.e. wire-bound, or wireless. The system called ‘fiber to the building’ or ‘fiber to the premise’ (FTTB/FTTP) uses legacy copper wires inside the buildings or premises for coupling to the optical fibers, which fibers must reach these buildings or premises.
According to ‘fiber to the curb’ (FTTC) as well as according to ‘fiber to the distribution point’ (FTTdP), for example, the endpieces of optical fibers of a network which approach closest to the respective customer premise are accessible in distribution points, such as street cabinets, handholes, manholes, or other compartments either buried underground or disposed above ground; plural endpieces of optical fibers are accessible there for coupling to an electrical network connecting the customer premises. For instance, the urban or rural power supply system with high alternating current voltages of 110 V and 220 V may be used as well as regional/local power supply nets with medium or low voltage, or electrical telecommunication networks (including coaxial cable networks). Particularly in case of wired networks which mostly comprise copper lines, i.e. copper cables accessing each household, basement or building, the legacy copper lead-in infrastructure may be used for bridging the distances between a distribution point, i.e. access location of an optical distribution fiber network, and the customer premises.
Likewise, wireless modules, devices and/or networks may also be used for transmitting the high-frequency data signals between an access location of the optical distribution network and the customer premises. The exploited electrical communication networks may include wireless transceivers, such as antennas, aerials, electrical transmission towers, small cell radio access nodes, Ethernet bridged WiFi modules, WiFi point-to-point connections between paired wireless modules, or other electrical transmission devices.
For transmitting high frequency signals of telecommunication services, for example, especially at high bandwidths in modern broadband services, by means of an existing electrical wire-bound or wireless network, diverse electrical modulation techniques are applied, such as DSL, VDSL, VDSL2, G.fast, cable modem protocols or other conversion technologies by which the data format and/or data protocol is changed.
The present application is applicable to any of these deployment schemes, concepts, wire-bound and wireless networks, customer premises and other devices.
According to most of the above deployment schemes, a respective distribution point, i.e. access location where an endpiece of an optical fiber is accessible, must be provided with electrical power, since the optical distribution network per se does supply electrical power and since an optical network terminal unit to be coupled to a fiber endpiece requires power supply for being operated. Accordingly, the already existing, legacy electrical networks are commonly not only used for transmitting as well as modulating the high-frequency telecommunication data to be transmitted, but also for supplying electrical power, by reverse-feeding, to the optical network terminal unit coupled to a fiber endpiece at an access point of the optical distribution network.
Accordingly, any optical-electrical interface device optically coupled to a respective fiber endpiece is driven by electrical power supplied from the subscriber premises or other power source units connected to it over a small or, in most cases, large distance. A power sourcing management unit, such as a microcontroller, calculates the share of electrical power to be drained and reverse-fed from each client permanently connected, by means of electrical hardware comprising a reverse power feeder at the customer premise, to the optical-electrical interface device so as to contribute and pay the proper share of power consumption needed by an interface device connected to plural customers, users or subscribers. In such multi-user optical-electrical interface devices representing multi-port devices, one single optical port is coupled to a fixed number of electrical ports, for instance to 4, 8, or 16 electrical ports.
Conventionally, a multi-port interface device comprises one respective electrical module device, i.e. an electrical converter module for each user, which is required for converting the electrical signals according to a modulation protocol, such as DSL, VDSL, VDSL2, G.fast, or coaxial cable modem protocol, for instance. Electrical transmission of telecommunication data, between the multi-port optical-electrical interface device and the connected subscriber premises, is then executed according to the respective protocol. For example, in the housing of a multi-port optical-electrical interface constructed for connecting 16 customer premises to an optical fiber, there are 16 VDSL-converter modules comprised in the housing, of which some or all can be used simultaneously. Usually plural of such multi-port interface devices are installed in a street cabinet, manhole or handhole or another kind of the distribution point, so that pluraly kinds of electrical converter modules may be installed in a street cabinet, manhole or handhole.
Often, the number of users, i.e. customer premises connected to a particular interface device is smaller than the number of electrical converter modules provided in the interface device housing. These users then combinedly share, i.e. reverse-feed the electrical power consumed by this interface device. Although its power consumption includes the electrical power for operating all converter modules inside the housing, including the power for accessing the unused converter modules, the power consumption of such a conventional multi-port interface device is still lower than that of a corresponding plurality of individual single-port interface devices, which are also being installed at these distribution points. Moreover, such a multi-port interface device is smaller, in total size, than a corresponding number of single-port interface devices.
On the other hand, such conventional single-port optical-electrical interface devices have other benefits; they are powered individually by each respective subscriber alone, since no power supply sharing is needed. Furthermore, they are rather small since they comprise only one electrical converter module; thus they maybe more easily installed in the size-constrained compartments of a street cabinet, manhole, handholes or another kind of distribution point in which the space is readily filled with other optical-electrical interface devices and legacy copper wires of electrical networks connected to them. Furthermore, plural single-port interface devices are more easily selected according to the liking of each subscriber, and combinedly installed, thereby combining different broadband data conversion protocol technologies (such as VDSL or the like, see above) within one distribution point, simply by selecting and installing the single-port interface devices constructed for the respective conversion protocol technology.
However, so far there exists no interface device or interface system for reconciling the benefits of single-port devices and multi-port devices with one another. There is a need for an optical-electrical interface device which allows an easier implementation of the bridging technology, i.e. electrical modulation techniques, subscribed by the customer premises connected to the distribution point. Furthermore, it might be desirable to more easily increase the number of customer premises connectable to a single optical fiber. Beyond that, it could be desirable to further reduce the power consumption at distribution points, even below the power consumption currently achievable by the use of multi-port interface devices.